Weissman: It’s not a pretty picture

With the year coming to a close, it’s time to reflect on how things are going. I’m very proud of the work we’ve done together. We won some hugely important victories and built an increasingly powerful movement to take on corporate power.

For now, I want to offer a snapshot of corporate power in Washington. It’s not a pretty picture.

Corporate crime and wrongdoing is an everyday fact of life in the United States and around the world. Still, the past year has been remarkable for a series of high-profile, deadly corporate disasters: the BP Deepwater Horizon catastrophe that killed 11 workers and spewed millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, the deadly explosion at Massey’s Upper Big Branch coal mine, and the unintended acceleration of Toyota cars associated with more than 90 deaths.

You might think that these disasters, on their own and together, would impel desperately needed legislative reform. Such was not the case.

Despite blanket TV and newspaper coverage of the corporate wrongdoing in each case, despite deep public outrage, despite public clamor for action to prevent the same things from happening again, Congress has done … exactly nothing.

And the situation is about to get worse.

To be fair, the House of Representatives in each instance took at least some action and might have done more had things looked better in the Senate. But Senate Republicans—sometimes with Democratic allies—acting on behalf of corporate patrons have blocked reform efforts.

For much of the summer, the nation was transfixed by video feeds of the BP oil gusher and the damage it wreaked. The House of Representatives responded by passing legislation that would remove the $75 million liability cap for oil damages and bar companies with poor safety and environmental records from receiving new offshore drilling leases. But oil industry-allied senators prevented passage of the bill.

The explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine killed 29 miners and introduced the country to a caricature of a heartless CEO, Massey Energy’s Don Blankenship (who just last week announced his retirement). If ever there was a moment for forward progress on workplace health and safety, it was in the wake of the Massey tragedy. The Robert C. Byrd Mine Safety and Health Act would modestly increase the size of fines for endangering workers, make it a felony to cause the death of a worker by knowingly violating safety rules, protect whistleblowers who call attention to workplace hazards, and deter employers from delaying resolution of citations for violations of workplace health and safety rules. But the business lobby has prevented the bill from moving ahead.

Revelations of deadly, sudden acceleration in Toyota cars were followed by ever more revelations of problems with Toyota vehicles, major vehicle recalls, public apologies from Toyota, and damning indictments of inaction by the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration. Yet thanks to the auto lobby—amazingly, including lobbying from the very General Motors in which the U.S. government (i.e., the public) remains the primary shareholder—Congress has failed to pass the Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 2010, a bill to upgrade safety standards and provide more funding to the resource-starved federal auto safety agency.

There’s no mystery as to the congressional failure. It is simply a reflection of the same corporate power that led to the under-regulation and under-enforcement that made each of the corporate disasters possible.

Yet the ability of corporations and industries to block remedial regulatory efforts at the very moment when they are most vulnerable—due to adverse publicity and an outraged public’s call for action—speaks to the extraordinary political power of Big Business.

That power is certain to be enhanced in the incoming Congress.

Most remarkable of all, with evidence all around of the need for stronger rules to control corporations and protect Americans, the Chamber of Commerce and the business lobby are gearing up for a campaign claiming that the way to jumpstart the economy is by rolling back existing regulations.

Yes, corporations have earned record profits in the past quarter. American businesses raked in profits at an annual rate of $1.659 trillion in the third quarter of 2010!

Yes, it was the failure to regulate Wall Street that cost 8 million jobs and plunged us into the current recession.

In a world ruled by power not logic, however, facts are not enough to defeat corporate propaganda and destructive policy agendas.

Doing that will require overcoming public disgust with Washington’s failures. It will also require moving beyond mere outrage with corporate wrongdoing to organized outrage. As deeply flawed as the policymaking process is, an organized citizenry can still make change for good. It’s not going to come any other way.

I know that this all may sound disheartening. But there’s no point in sugar-coating things.

That said, I am absolutely confident in our ability to turn aside the coming corporate attacks on our health, safety and consumer protections.

For nearly 40 years, Public Citizen has proved again and again that organized people power can defeat concentrated corporate power. Together, I’m certain we’re going to rise to the challenge we face—and not only blunt corporate attacks, but continue our work of bettering our country and deepening our democracy.

Related

5 Responses

You are much more optimistic than I am. I don’t see American’s even willing to be organized for the most part. They don’t have the capacity to even believe that their government would do such things let alone actually be aware of the situations. Most are content to be uninvolved which is why when someone start talking politics at a gathering you start getting dirty looks. It’s been brainwashed into people that you don’t discuss such things in public and only show your disapproval at the ballot box which is a lost cause at best.

I would suggest to you that a campaign of encouraging people to vote for people that they trust or what I like to call the Anti-Ballot Measure that states that if their name appears on a ballot those are the very people that we should not be voting for but against.

We also must get people to realize that the constant division of the electorate is what Washington relies on to keep us in disarray and unless we can stand together we can’t win this war against the citizens of this country. But that requires that they accept a common understanding of the tactics that are being used and that they can agree on a common solution otherwise we have one administration legislating and the next deregulating forever back and forth and no accomplishments.

The saddest part is that we’ve managed to undo all the things we’ve learned since the Depression and repeal almost every one of them in favor of myths that the market will take care of pricing in various uncertainties and the market is efficient neither of which I accept. The market is a vehicle of speculation for those that have insider knowledge and those that have large amounts of money that can literally move the market via their money or access to the airwaves to manipulate stocks that based on true value but on backroom meetings that result in profit for two parties and losses to the rests.

We must move away from a republic and a two-party system in favor of a more parliamentary system where alliances are created on a case by case basis where no one is allowed to associate with a party which means eliminating the hierarchical structure where the party in power controls the calendar. The calendar should be open for all potential legislation and must be unfettered by K street and therefore either we use the ABM as a method of election or if we continue to vote for those on the ballot then they must be publicly funded and allowed to accept no gifts and barred from access with any member of any interest unless an opponent of that same position is present in the room at the same time. These closed door meetings must be eliminated and maybe that means we should literally remove the doors from within the Congressional halls. We must have some method of insuring that ongoing conversations remain above board.

And finally we must abolish capitalism. Capitalism by it’s very nature spurs greed which encourages the very behavior that forces us to regulate. We need a method to put the means of production into the hands of the people so that they are responsible for the product or services that they would sell and as a quorum would make decisions on product changes, distribution of earnings and pay plans that would treat each individual just as importantly to the success of the business as all those that work there and since there success is dependent on the businesses success they won’t be as quick to jeopardize their futures by taking shortcuts that could potentially ruin the business. After all the without the janitor the floors would be filthy and the bathroom rank and no one would shop there, without the cashier no one would collect the money and insure that it didn’t disappear into their own accounts and since management will be by a quorum of the workers their is no one that truly deserves more pay than another. But people have been so brainwashed that I’m not convinced this is an option. Just the mere phrase that “capitalism is bad” sparks fury in many peoples eyes that cannot even see that the government has been largely behind every major effort in this country and that it was not the capitalist. The capitalist without the government is not going to risk their money on anything for fear of losing it. So it requires a re-education component that shows the recklessness of capitalism and it’s destruction of resources and it’s unsustainability because of that destruction and that it only works as long as people continue to overpopulate the earth because it basically is a ponzi scheme the depends on more and more people to consume.

“I would suggest to you that a campaign of encouraging people to vote for people that they trust or what I like to call the Anti-Ballot Measure that states that if their name appears on a ballot those are the very people that we should not be voting for but against.”
———————————————————-

Ralph Nader’s name appeared on the Connecticut ballot in the 2008 election and I could not hope for a better person to vote for.

I knew Mr. Nader stood little chance of winning the election, but it didn’t matter. I vote for the candidate who speaks for me. I vote my conscience. I thought that’s what we’re supposed to do. Besides, I thought of that vote also as my way of sending a little message to Washington that the two major party candidates that were being shoved down America’s throats were, quite frankly, totally unacceptable.

I was and still am, damn proud of my vote in that election.
The same holds true for my vote for Ralph in 2000 and 2004.

“Ralph Nader’s name appeared on the Connecticut ballot in the 2008 election and I could not hope for a better person to vote for.”

I couldn’t agree more! Don’t misunderstand what I am saying. There are exceptions to the rules and we know who they are; but in general they are not worthy of our vote.

Look at what just got voted in. Now we have a larger GOP population and there first agenda and Obama’s (a Republican in sheep’s clothing) is to give money to the rich and increase the taxes on the poorest of Americans, cut into the Social Security program and Medicare to cover shortfalls which unless we make ourselves loud and clear we’ll never see again. There’s actually going to be a $400 increase in taxes on the poorest of the poor if this tax bill gets passed while every other level will get tax relief at the expense of the poorest. But this has pretty much always been the case especially in the deep south where they tax food and other necessities to extract as much money from the poor as they can. So they are literally so poor that they have to choose between buying milk or buying eggs. I have a new found respect for what these people live through on daily basis although I find it hard to believe that our country is not the place that I was taught it was.

I for one am dependent on SSDI because my employer changed my disability policy without notifying me which is a very long legal discussion but needless to say one I didn’t win. So it’s all I’ve got to live on and I’m being bled dry very quickly. I can’t afford all my medications, I can’t even put away enough to cover my property taxes every month. So at some point I will – I don’t know what will happen to me. But now they are threatening to reduce the COLAs which will hurt me even more along with the devaluation of the dollar and the inflation that the Fed is saying we don’t have (I can guarantee that we do as the CPI is almost at it’s all time high) and now they are reneging on the $250 promise for 2011 because of not getting an increase and the rapid cost of medical care increasing. That may not seem like much to someone that can work but to me it’s huge and many others.

Before the crisis even hit seniors who have medical coverage that I cannot even apply for because I’m not old enough (which is age discrimination) got complete drug coverage through their insurer and the state and yet they have been able to amass retirement accounts, pensions, etc which I have not. But my point is they get a lot of benefits that people that are on SSDI do not get but yet we are treated the same when it comes to our monthly check from the federal government. Those of us on SSDI don’t get a premium for having greater medical expenses or not having been able to create nest eggs. But that is not my point. My point is that even with the money that seniors have been able to save they are still losing their homes in large amounts to property taxes. And just yesterday I heard that senior bankruptcies are up 433% on the year so things are looking really bad for those of us on fixed incomes and the only thing we have to look forward to is when we’re going to loose everything because they keep taking away from us the tiny amount we get. Yet we put people in prisons at a cost of roughly $50,000 per year, per prisoner while seniors get an average of 1/5 of that amount and have to pay for their medical insurance, food, prescription, doctors visits, clothing, cars maintenance, homeowners and auto insurance, all utilities, etc while the prisoner pays for nothing. Who says crime doesn’t pay? It pays better than having to live in the federal safety net and have to worry every day as to what major expense may come up that is going to drown us in a sea of debt.

I can’t sell my home because renting would be more expensive. I live in a very low income area which forced me to leave my friends and support network behind so I could at least survive for a while – so it appears that there’s a war against the old and disabled. My only choice is to leave the country and in the process I will loose my medical insurance and I can only hope that I can either buy insurance which may be affordable outside of the US or that it’s medical costs are so cheap that I won’t have to worry about having insurance or that a foreign government would be willing to let me buy into their system. But I’m not real big on leaving behind the only country I’ve known to have to learn a new language and maybe end up with foods that I don’t really care for or whatever. It’s a tough choice and one that I’m dragging my feet on making because it’s going to be hard on my physically as well as mentally.

But it’s obvious that they don’t want to take care of the people in our country that cannot be productive and be slaves to the capitalist pigs. If we don’t work we are accused of being malingerers and if we do work they are continually cutting our wages through currency devaluations. Even at my last place of employment for the 4 years I worked there I never say a merit pay raise only a COLA. I don’t know if that’s the way all employers are now but it was the first employer I worked for that I didn’t get a merit raise every year or a promotion.

911 was an open declaration of war against the american people by off-shore bankers for the purposes of invading the middle east and setting up homeland security to prepare the people for an offense against them by the off-shore bankers using corporate governmental influence to implement their plan to destroy america and the american way of life. never again shall we dare to think that we have any say whatsoever over any aspect of our own lives again. their plan is that our infrastructure will go to hell while they bleed our economy dry over opium and oil in the middle east while standing armies in our country are prepared to herd the american people together into concentration camps that have already been built all over the country. iraq and afghanistan are just practice for doing the same thing to the american people. our representatives in washington have all been bought or extorted so we cannot expect any help from them. from the deniers of 911 truth to those taking every advantage of the gathering of darkness in high places, they are all traitors to america and are waging war against us. while the rich are collecting their booty and are cutting and running for the high ground. they all have their little armies to protect them behind their castle walls all safe and sound. while everybody else can only rely on genetically modified foods and carcinogenic water and god only knows what they are doing to the air already; along with every other secret and evil thing they have the power to unleash on their neighbors. make no mistake these creatures with the backing of the miscreant elite are waging war against america, the american people and the american way of life. they are set to decimate us leaving us dead and barefoot in the kitchen.